Ryan Mason

And definitely read a lot more Italian than Irish. He was an odd, jarring choice.

I don't know that anything could ever top Kathleen Tolan as Mary #3 in that department. OOF. Another Ryan's Hope recast that I think would fit here would be Nancy Barrett as Faith Coleridge #2. Faith was suddenly noticeably older and vaguely Southern(!). She only lasted a little over a month and then Catherine Hicks took over a couple of weeks later. Another one: Marguerite Hickey as Flame Beaufort #2 on Santa Barbara. The recast that comes to my mind most to try to describe how jarring it was was actually on primetime...when Dynasty replaced glamorous Brit Catherine Oxenberg with dowdy American Karen Cellini as Amanda. I thought Roberta Bizeau was one of the definite bright spots of the last couple years of Santa Barbara and to me just seemed to radiate off the screen...and they replaced her with someone who didn't have the acting chops or charisma to be a convincing under-five "May I take your order?" waitress. She was mercifully gone in a couple of weeks.

Given the timing, on Ryan's Hope I imagine she'd have been up for Maggie, Katie, or Pru.

That was enjoyable! Although it's kind of funny in hindsight that you have these iconic longterm couples of Reva & Josh and Cliff & Nina...and then Gina & Scott are basically blink and you missed them. But I was still glad they were included!

One of the things that I found refreshing about Ryan's Hope when I discovered it on SoapNet was that for the most part, Delia was the only female character whose life seemed to revolve around getting and keeping a man, and it was clearly viewed as a character flaw. Because by the 2000s, I feel like fully half the female characters on the soaps at that time were obsessed with trying to snare some vacuous lunkhead. Up that to like 85% of them if we're talking Days Of Our Lives or Passions.

Yes, a few months before Wanda De Jesus, actually. Shortly after the Dobsons took over again, Rosa just magically reappeared as if she'd just been offscreen in the Capwell kitchen for the past four years. I just started watching this from the beginning again last year and I will agree with past posts that there really does seem to have been a reboot of sorts in January 1985. To me, it seemed like the four performers who really seemed to set the tone for the new wittier, more sophisticated direction were Nicolas Coster, Louise Sorel, Lane Davies and Judith McConnell.

I totally agree with this, as most of you seem to. Mary Carney was at least competent and reasonably likable; I just feel like she barely had anything of substance to do before she was abruptly given the hook. And I get the backstory of Kathleen Tolan having done a play with Helen Gallagher, but...at any point did they ever actually READ her before they greenlit her? Because...OOF. First time I saw her on SoapNet was right when this GODAWFUL actress named Charity Rahmer played Belle on Days of Our Lives for all of three weeks before she was mercifully recast; her line readings were straight out of a Charlie Brown special. I remember thinking Kathleen Tolan could have played her mother! In the Frank/Jill/Delia triangle, Delia WAS the one who was cheated on, so I got why she was upset and thought it was perfectly valid in theory at least, but of course it was blown up to Wagnerian proportions including falls involving staircases and tricycles. But with Pat/Faith/Delia I had no sympathy for her...especially because it was mainly with Catherine Hicks's Faith and I really liked her.

I had thought that there was a Tommy Biddles on there, but then I realized I was thinking of Dr. Biddles on Santa Barbara. Never mind! 😃

When I watched Ryan's Hope from the beginning for the first time on SoapNet, I really liked Faith Catlin and thought it was refreshing that they had a female character that was more of a nerd. Then I absolutely loved Catherine Hicks's take on the character; I found her really natural and likable. So then to see Faith Catlin again after that when SoapNet started from the beginning again was super jarring.

I mean, there's a kernel of truth in that in that Claire did WANT to kill her off when Kate left, but it took 3 recasts for ABC to let her!

Ron Hale has passed away. 😥 It looks like it happened in late August but is just being made public now. https://people.com/ron-hale-general-hospital-star-dies-at-78-8722466

I feel like this was talked about a little bit in one of the earlier episodes, like one that would have been in 1984, but it's not the sort of thing where I can tell which episode specifically from summaries to go back and look. So this is all going from memory, but I want to say that it was mentioned that one of the Capwells, maybe Nathaniel, was the first to settle in Santa Barbara when he moved there from back east. (And then later in 1986 it was established that the Grant/Madeline/Courtney branch of the family lived in Boston.) I'm not sure if it was ever explicitly spelled out for the Lockridges, but the impression I got was that at that time, they were already an established society family there and at that point better off than the Capwells that came there. But I could be wrong!

He was in college in 1986, at least. They didn't show him in classes that I recall, but there was that storyline about him being on the college radio station KUSB with Jane and Hayley.

Reminds me of how I've always wondered if no one realized that they had both an Ellen and an Ellie and a Lily and a Lilith on at the same time! (Although granted, the characters in question were nothing alike.)

I knew The Smurfs were going to show up eventually. Integral part of my and my friends' Saturday morning cartoon watching in grade school!

Now we're hitting the part where I remember watching a lot of this stuff while I was stranded at my grandparents' house during the summers while my mom worked! I remember the reruns of Diff'rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Too Close For Comfort and Benson, and the game shows like Wheel of Fortune and Sale of the Century. (I even vaguely remember WATCHING Dream House, but couldn't tell you a thing about it!) Matter of fact, game shows wound up being my gateway into soaps. I also had started watching the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour, which Santa Barbara replaced. So I watched the first episode to see what it was like, and it ended with Santana going to the bus station with a gun to kill Joe. I had to see if she shot him or not, and the rest is history!

I feel like Chicago itself, where I grew up, was an ABC daytime town, and possibly for local news as well. I don't necessarily have data I can point to, but just about everyone I knew who watched soaps and news watched the ABC lineup and Eyewitness News, and I vaguely recall some sort of on-air Chicago ratings recap in the early 80s where episodes of All My Children would frequently be among the top shows.

That's what I was thinking of. I didn't watch GH until years later through YouTube because it was SB's competitor, but it was rather similar:

Even if they didn't have A and Marcy, they could have very easily had someone get a phone call or a letter and just basically say "Hey-Cruz and Eden found each other and are back together". It could literally have been done in mere seconds with just a line or two! Ah well.

Same. It was a little jarring at first, but then again lots of recasts are. I thought she had a solid and enjoyable take on it. There were a lot of other TV shows I remember her fondly from too growing up, like an All in the Family three-parter as a waitress Archie is tempted to have an affair with and an eccentric aunt on Eight is Enough. Thanks for posting this, j swift; this is the first I've heard of it.

Years ago I put together some animated YouTube videos imagining what it would be like if Ryan's Hope was subject to the ABC soap regime of the late 2000s. Believe it or not, that was one of the ideas I thought they'd force on the show!

What's funny is in my head I always thought Santa Barbara was worse in terms of original character recasts, but not really when I actually lay it out. They had 5 CCs (4 that actually aired), 4 Santanas and Kellys, 3 Masons, Warrens, and Lakens, and 2 Joes, Sophias, Ginas, Minxes, and Teds over the course of their 8 1/2 years. But I think it's just a lot of theirs happened within the first year and a half (4 on-air CCs, 3 Santanas, and 2 Joes, Sophias, and Ginas). By that point RH had "only" had 3 Faiths and 2 Franks.

Oh wow! My 7th birthday was 6 days before yours! So no matter how old you feel, I'll always be six days older! 🙂 But that said, I didn't watch Ryan's Hope back then. I started when SoapNet started the reruns from the beginning again in 2003. Which that, in and of itself, being 21 years ago now makes me feel old as well!

I mainly remember the Apparition Lass gobbledygook...where his tumor made him hallucinate his ex (I think?) spouting endless variations of "She LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIED to ya, Thomas!"

She also seemed to have a slight Southern accent to me, which also definitely didn't fit! I think I remember reading something on a Ryan's Hope website or board years ago that Rosalinda Guerra (Ramona) got married and decided to quit. And Catherine Hicks wound up being my favorite Faith, because to me she just came across as really natural and likable and sensible and grounded...which, you're right, was definitely not how Faith had been written. That must have been some therapy she got in that month or two offscreen!